I wrote a blog last year that centered around growing up as a Jewish kid during Christmas and how to now handle my daughter during this time of year. You can read it here. I used to think it was pretty funny; I kept it light and to the point. But now I don’t think it’s that funny. I’ve been finding people’s assumption that saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone is totally normal and acceptable to be pretty fucking presumptuous and rude. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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My daughter is 3 1/2 years old. Although you would never know it now, she was a late talker. By late, of course, I mean that at 1 1/2 she was only saying a few words, ya know the way most 1 1/2-year-olds are. My girlfriend works for the Early Intervention program so when she saw my daughter having fits and struggling to express herself, she immediately had her evaluated for speech therapy, which she qualified for.  To not have her evaluated would have been like a dentist letting his teenage son walk around with an overbite and a snaggle-tooth. There’s nothing to talk about. You slap braces on that kid’s ugly mouth. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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I apologize for my absence these past couple of weeks. I vow here and now to be present and accounted for every Thursday, from this day forth. No more random, unexplained disappearances. I’ve experienced too many of those this week, and so in my own small way I’ve decided to show up. Every Thursday, as previously promised, I will be here. I will show up.

I want so badly to be able to bitch and moan about some mindless act of parenting that makes me mental and irate in order to garner laughter and prove my innate ability to turn everything into a joke. But I am struggling in a way that is unfamiliar to me. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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I recently wrote a post about my three-year-old daughter and her new found love of torturing me. She’s a smart, sassy little girl with an attitude that, at times, stops me in my tracks. It’s hard to fault her for something she most likely inherited from me. Plus, she’s ridiculously funny — like she gets-the-joke kind of funny. But lately, the cute and funny part of her is taking a backseat to a whining, screaming child — and the cause of these outbursts? Getting dressed. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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Indeed she does. Ladies and Gentleman, allow me to present Totally Stylin Tattoo Barbie! Thanks Mattel. My three-year-old definitely needs this toy. It’s an awesome idea  — giving her ways to express herself creatively via mock-mutilating herself and Barbie? Genius. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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The reality show Survivor has a great little tag line, “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.” The person who is able to accomplish all three of these things at the end of the show wins a million dollars. Pretty awesome, right? My three-year-old daughter would kick ass in that game. They’d never see her coming. I imagine it would go a little something like this:

“Ohhh look at that gorgeous little girl with the blond hair and big eyes. What a sweet smile you have. Aren’t you just the cutest little thing?! Hey wait a minute, how the hell did I end up on the floor — hogtied, with you standing on my back pumping your fists in victory? What just happened?!”

I’ll tell ya how. She just outwitted, outplayed and outlasted your ass. Welcome to my world. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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I’m not going to sit here and reiterate the blog I wrote back in July about kids watching TV, specifically Noggin, which for the record is no longer Noggin. Now it’s Nick Jr., for real. What the hell? They can just drop the name of a network overnight? A little warning would have been nice. I nearly had a panic attack searching for Noggin on September 28, 2009 — a Monday, no less. Like I don’t have enough problems on Monday morning, now I had to deal with this shit? Not a very nice way to start the week. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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My girlfriend (partner, wife, etc.) and I have been together for seven years. We have a three-year-old daughter that was conceived using an anonymous donor through a cryobank. She is a happy, well adjusted kid who attends pre-school on a daily basis. The children in her class happen to be absolute sweethearts and we have been very lucky thus far with the reaction we received from her teachers and the parents of her classmates when they found out we were a two-mom house. Not a single person seemed phased. Living in NY affords us that luxury. I mean, it’s New York. We’ve got Broadway and Chelsea — two of the gayest places on the planet. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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This is for real. This actually happened. A woman adopted a little boy, and then terminated the adoption after 18 months, claiming she couldn’t bond with the child. Seriously? That’s even allowed? [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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I’ve been taking photos of my daughter non-stop since the moment she was born. I have always loved photography and I happen to have a pretty cute kid that loves the camera.  Her first bath is on video, as well as captured by still photographs. Who knew that what I was doing could have led to her being taken away from me? [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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This is the second time I’ve read about a stranger hitting someone else’s kid in less than two weeks. What is going on? Maybe too many people are reading my blogs and taking them too seriously. I’m only kidding (sort of) when I say I’ll slap your kids around if you wont parent them or if they hurt my kid.  Apparently Gloria Ballard thought it was fine to spank another woman’s son after the two-year-old baby boy said something that annoyed her.

Is this bitch for real? Lady, you’re lucky this went down in Cincinnati, because if that were my kid, your ass would be in the hospital, not jail. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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I received a ton of feedback on last week’s blog about music, your car and your kids. As a result, I thought I’d approach the topic from a different perspective. I am all about exposing my daughter to all kinds of music. I think music is instrumental in a child’s development. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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Music has always been a very big part of my life. I grew up in a house where music was on in every room. Standards like The Beatles, The Bee Gees, The Carpenters, Simon and Garfunkel, and yeah there was some Neil Diamond in the mix too were a part of our daily routine. I’m not gonna lie, I knew all the words to America. Go ahead and laugh. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
8 Comments »

OK. I’m back. Crude, obnoxious, hating you, your kids and the way you parent. Happy? Fantastic. Clearly you weren’t digging my serious blog last week as I only received two comments. TWO comments. That’s a record low for me. Pathetic. Just goes to show you guys don’t want to hear about the ugly scary truths of life, but rather the senseless judgemental rants I have to offer. I am here to happily oblige. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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This week I’ve put my scheduled column aside and have decided to write about the crash on the Taconic State Parkway. I’ll give a very brief synopsis as I’m sure most of you know by now. A woman went the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in New York while driving a mini-van full of young kids (two kids of her own and three nieces) and crashed into another car carrying three people. Everyone died except the woman’s son, who was hospitalized. Turns out she had a belly full of alcohol and was stoned. They’re calling it Westchester’s worst accident in 75 years. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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This morning I woke up to find my daughter sitting at the kitchen table in her bikini, dipping mini marshmallows in maple syrup. No, she wasn’t alone. She didn’t get up and do something cute like fix herself breakfast. Grandma did! [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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In keeping with tradition, here’s a nugget of information about me: I don’t wanna have a play date. I am formally announcing my withdrawal from this hideous tradition. Now it’s one thing to get together with my friends and let our kids kill each other while we suck down Bellini’s and talk about college and all the dumb shit we did. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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I grew up in a house where TV was a non-issue.  If we wanted to watch TV, we watched. If we wanted to go outside and try to light ants on fire with a magnifying glass, then we did that instead. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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Here’s the gist: I have a potty mouth. No denying it. I drop F-bombs and A-bombs like they’re going out of style. Most of the time I manage to earmuff my daughter or at the very least, wait for her to leave the room. I’m an adult, I can say what I want. But I don’t want my daughter running around cursing or even worse, teaching her friends to curse. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
8 Comments »

I’m going to try to keep today’s post light, but it is with a somewhat heavy heart that I write today. My grandmother (Baba, as she is known to us) fell down the stairs the other night and is in the hospital with broken ribs, bruises from head to toe and the looming fear of pneumonia. She suffers from dementia and so she often goes in and out of lucidity. The fact that she mainly speaks Yiddish makes for an interesting dynamic between her, the doctors and the nurses. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental by Jaclyn Roth
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